[Mail-Followup-To set to debian-python@lists.debian.org] [Damian Johnson, 2010-11-16]

My project currently installs to the default '/usr/share/pyshared' [2] but

/usr/share/pyshared is Debian tools' internal location and you should not use it (i.e. it's not and will never be in sys.path)

according to the debian policy for private python modules [3] it should be installed to '/usr/share' instead (my program is an application and there's

/usr/share/binary_package_name/ to be exact

no reason for it to be importable by other modules). The problem with doing this is that the egg-info metadata is hardcoded in 'distutils/command/install.py' to be added on install, and having an egg-info file on '/usr/share' causes a lintian error when generating the deb.

--install-lib=/usr/share/yourpackagename/ --install-data=/usr/share/yourpackagename/ (and maybe --install-scripts=/usr/share/yourpackagename/) should do the right thing (i.e. don't install directly to /usr/share/ as it could couse namespace prioblems with other private modules) -- Piotr Ożarowski Debian GNU/Linux Developer www.ozarowski.pl www.griffith.cc www.debian.org GPG Fingerprint: 1D2F A898 58DA AF62 1786 2DF7 AEF6 F1A2 A745 7645

[Damian Johnson, 2010-11-17]

...

--install-lib=/usr/share/yourpackagename/ --install-data=/usr/share/yourpackagename/ (and maybe --install-scripts=/usr/share/yourpackagename/) should do the right thing

Unfortunately not quite. Passing those flags results in: /usr/share/arm/arm/<package's contents> /usr/share/arm/arm-1.3.7_dev.egg-info

... and that's perfectly fine (if the first "arm" is (Debian) package name)

The egg-info metadata only has relevance if this was being installed to pyshared so ideally it should be omitted and the package contents just installed to: /usr/share/arm/<package's contents>

You can remove it in debian/rules (see below) if you want (if it's not used in the module), keeping it shouldn't harm, though

Setting "--install-lib=/usr/share" adds my package to the right location, but also includes "/usr/share/arm-1.3.7_dev.egg-info" which causes a lintian error. A couple quick questions:

What if package foo will install private module "arm" in /usr/share/ as well? Please don't do that unless there's a really good reason to take over a namespace

- If private python modules aren't supposed to be living in '/usr/share/pyshared' then shouldn't distutil include an option to omit the egg-info metadata?

Are you sure this data isn't used? An option to disable .egg-info file/directory generation would be nice, though.

- Any ideas you have for how to remove the egg-info during debian builds would be much appreciated.

How about something like this (I didn't test it): | #!/usr/bin/make -f | %: | dh $@ --with python2 | | override_dh_auto_install: | python setup.py install --install-lib=/usr/share/foo/ --install-data=/usr/share/foo/ --install-scripts=/usr/share/foo/ | dh_link /usr/share/foo/myscript /usr/bin/myscript | rm -rf debian/foo/usr/share/foo/arm*info replace foo with [Debian] binary package name; instead of dh_link line you can add debian/links file -- Piotr Ożarowski Debian GNU/Linux Developer www.ozarowski.pl www.griffith.cc www.debian.org GPG Fingerprint: 1D2F A898 58DA AF62 1786 2DF7 AEF6 F1A2 A745 7645